An Oil Painting

When I was in Rehoboth beach, DE, I encountered many art stores and galleries. Most of them are oil paintings, even through I was actively looking for acrylics. One of the oil paintings really strike my fancy. It was a painting of a water town. I was overwhelmed with the subtle detail, color, and composition of the painting. I wouldn't say this painting was extremely detailed, but it included enough detail for the viewers' eye to wonder around. I would call it a colorful painting, but it was mostly through the use of brown, blue, and red. In terms of composition, the deep alley down in the middle gives the viewer a sense of depth, space, and reality. The asymmetrical sides and lighting composed by the building makes this painting more interesting, avoiding the sense dullness that symmetrical paintings would create. I am not sure if I can recreate this with acrylic. It seems to me that the blending techniques were used a lot in this painting, which is easy for oil but difficult for acrylics.

Happy Hour - Rock Bottom in Bethesda, MD

Not until I looked up the official website for Rock Bottom did I realize this is actually chain! I am usually not a fan of chains, due to the over dominance of stereotype caused by McDonalds, KFC, etc. I always think there is a lack of sophistication within the food that they prepare and the amount of attention placed into managing the restaurant.

We were tired and hungry after a long day of work, thus we wanted to stop by somewhere with food instead of making it on our own. It was a friday, so we took advantage of their late night happy hours.



We went for the calamari & pepper rings, southwest egg rolls, crispy chicken fingers, and mini street tacos.









The only thing that sticked out was the southwest egg rolls, because we concluded that it tasted awful. I wanted to say something about these egg rolls to the waiter, but was stopped for the concern of being rude.

Fins Fish House & Raw Bar in Rehoboth Beach, DE

This is perhaps one of my favorite places in Rehoboth Beach during the July 4th weekend, and one of the last place to stop by before I leave this wonderful place next to water and never-ending skylines. I had some of the most delicious oysters from Fins Fish House & Raw Bar, and this is definitely one place I will never forget. Located in a laid-back town, this restaurant is as laid back as any beach town can be. The interior of the bar are filled with decorations like starfishes and oyster shells. Just in case if you forget, the large boat decor constantly reminds you that you are at a beach. And this restaurant have busy but incredible friendly staff members who does their job right.





My group of friends and I took on full advantage of the happy hour deals that they have on Sundays, which is amazing in the first place. They have very fresh seafood. Even through the happy hour menu is limited, the 1/2 dozen raw oysters is not something we can pass on.



I had the 1/2 lb shrimp and 1/2 dozen raw oysters. The oysters available for happy hour were Chincoteague and Hog Island. The Chincoteague were larger and sweeter, and the Hog Island were smaller and saltier. I personally preferred the Hog Island, althrough some of my friend were really digging the Chincoteague.





This is the steamed oysters ordered by one of my friend who refuse to eat anything raw.

Emaciated Deer?

I encountered this frightened deer on my way to volunteering. It was really alarmed when I took this picture, partially because I was staring at it for a good five minutes and pulling out high technology right in front of it. But I was quite surprised that a deer of this size is outside on a private lawn in the middle of the day. Usually I see groups of deers walking on the side of streets in DC in the middle of the night to prevent pedestrian's attention, I guess this one just wants attention. I could not make it from the looks of it whether it is so emaciated that its rib cage is showing, or it is very well fed and lean so that I can see the outlines of its muscle. Judging from my belief that deers don't usually come out during the day, I would go for the former.

What is inside this cup?

Guess what's inside this cup?



You are not sure? What about from bird's eye view?



Still not sure? I guess it could be literally anything.

Well, its cookies and cream flavored ice cream from my work. It does not look very appetizing, and I was thinking about not getting it. To make my experience having this thing more enjoyable, I added melon syrup and ground up Oreo cookies. It ended up tastes pretty good, but I wasn't sure whether its because of my creative toppings, or this brownish grayish ice cream itself.

MoMo Chicken and Jazz in Bethesda, MD

I came upon the name from a korean coworker of mine. With her highly encouraging opinion of this place, I went soon after I was introduced to this place. MoMo Chicken is a new restaurant that opened near where I live, conveniently located in downtown Bethesda. This place advertises to serve Korean-fusion style dishes, but I think they are mostly Korean. And the name is actually MoMo Chicken and Jazz, well, I failed to see the Jazzy influence anywhere from the last time I visited.

Located on Cordell avenue of Bethesda, this place gets a lot of attention. It has a nice patio outside of the restaurant, however, a bit crowded. The inner decorations of this place is amazing. It has a modern metallic feel to the interior design. Rustic hints were incorporated from the tables and chairs. They have two large screen TVs that were playing sports when I was there, but not sure if that is what they play all the time.







The food were on the pricy side, just because they are serving Korean food instead of other fancy shumancy foods. I tried their bulgogi platter, and unfortunately, the beef were a bit over cooked. However, I enjoyed their ordinary salad, and two miscellaneous pancakes that came on the sides. The sauce in the middle were made of sesame, which is not something I am a fan of.



Dduk bo ki:



My views of the place: A for appearance, and B for tastes. I would go back to this place again, but not anytime soon.

Cough Drops

A cough is difficult to recover, especially when you have a job that involves a lot of talking and people don't mind being coughed right in the face. My new coworker, who started his work days a month, is constantly facing my cough, and nice enough to not say anything about it. On the way home, however, I do encounter people who became very alarmed about my cough. They would purposefully walk away from me if I'm walking, or purposefully sit away from me if I'm on the metro. To prevent social awkwardness and causing negative first impressions, I tried some of those over-the-counter cough syrups that apparently have no use for me. I then started constantly popping cough drops one by one. Those cough drops really work. With the overpowering scent of menthol, I can barely feel my throat. Over the weekend I was studying with a couple of friends, and to prevent consistent disturbance peaceful study environment, I was eating cough drops non-stop. With the accumulated mountain-high garbage, I developed a surprisingly high amount of control over my body.

Cold in the Summer

Its the summer and air conditioning is all over the place. I never understood why the indoor air conditioning have to set at less than 70 degrees. I guess it would make sense for the body temperature to immediately cool down once inside a fully air conditioned building. The temperature inside the building, however, is much below what normal people can handle. It is very cold, and out door summer clothing could not suffice.

So I was sleeping one day, with the central-controlled air conditioner running full blast. The next day, I got a cold. Running nose, coughing, sore throat, no fever -- classic bacterial infection on my air way. It was strange at work being the only individual with a cold. Instead of gaining sympathy, I caused laughter, in addition to the occusional envy of my powerful air conditioner. After the cold subsided, I ended up with a never ending cough. They say a cough takes forever to heal. Therefore, in addition to coughing into people's faces all the time, eating cough drops constantly, I just have to patiently wait for 2-4 weeks for my cough to be gone and horse voice to be back to normal.

Oya Restaurant & Lounge in Washington, D.C.

I have been wanting to write about Oya Restaurant & Lounge for a long time. It seems like the more I waited to write this post, the lower ratings I give to this place. My first time going to Oya was two years ago. I went with my best friend as a temporary stopping place before our girls' night out began. We noticed that it was an asian fusion place, so we ordered sushi to see how different the fusion-ed sushi is --- It tastes like normal sushi with mayos.

The second time I went was a year ago. I went there for the romantic atmosphere: dark and mysterious, warm glowing white roses. There are large panels of mirrors on the walls, white classy table cloth and chairs, chandeliers and transparent diamonds hanging from all over the ceiling. I had the atlantic salmon, and it was yummy.







Very recently I went there again with a girlfriend of mine. Remembered the salmon as a decent dish, I was feeling in the mood to try some of their other entrees without caution. I ordered the NY strip steak, and my friend with her lamb chop. And we were so disappointed. Strip steak was not seasoned well; lamb chop was over cooked and dry.



Lamb Chop. 6.5/10.



NY strip steak. 6/10.



We will probably not visit this place anytime soon.

Scrumtious!

I encountered this delicious dessert when I was volunteering at Sibley. At first I just wanted a slice of the pound cake that were overflowing with pleasant esters of vanilla. Soft and spongy, easily digestable cake reminded me of that famous phase from Marie Antoinette: Qu’ils mangent de la brioche (Let them eat cake). Unfortunately I don't have the recipe for the pound cake, it seemed commercially available. As I started stuffing my face with pound cake, Ms. Nice Nurse came by and demanded me to try Scrumtious! that was located in the freezer. At first I declined, because 1) I do not want to take in additional fats, and 2) I was too lazy to do all of these things. Due to persistent requests, I finally took this miscellaneous cream out of the freezer, and added to my pound cake -- it was heaven in my mouth. And I cannot stop eating. Good thing I got the recipe, you can try to make it to see if you can stop eating or not.

The commercially available pound cake.

The so called Scrumtious! with recipe below:

- 1 can of condensed milk

- 3 containers of heavy wipe cream

- 3 can of fruit cocktail (drained)

- 2 table spoons of lemon juice

Instruction: Add the items above and mix well in a large bow with listed order. Stick in the freezer until it solidifies. Enjoy!

The New Studio Apartment

Because I am getting a new studio apartment to live on my own, I have this extra opportunity to expand on my creativity. It is a small but very new studio apartment with a merged living room/dining room. I have been thinking about ways to spaciously create a dinning/study/living/bedroom merge. It is quite a difficult task, specially when I am not an interior design expert.

One thing I really want to avoid is to shove my bed right in the face of the entrance doorway. I wanted to introduce a living room feel at the entrance without clustering up with furnitures. That means as little furnitures as possible and colorful accessories. I also thought about an office/living room merge dividing the dining room from bedroom area with dividers. Natural toned dividers such as large plants would match with the provided green carpet and beige colored countertops. As I was thinking, I looked up on some sample studio apartment designs, and was completely wowed by how efficient a studio apartment can be. Below are some sample models from home-designing.com:









Part of what makes these models so nice is excessive lighting. Lighting makes a large difference in the mood of the room. Another is color, which all depends on the owners' personal character. With these in mind, I think Ikea will help me out.

Brickside Food & Drink in Bethesda, MD

For one of the gbAMSA (Greater Bethesda America Medical Student Association) social hours we decided to go to Brickside Food & Drink in Bethesda, Maryland. I have heard from other fellows at work that Brickside is a dive bar. Now, I have seen really bad dive bars -- bars that do not decorate themselves properly, and are often filled with more of… homogenous crowd of people. They have leather chairs that squeak and falling apart, wooden bar stools that are scratched up, and walls of tilted picture frames. When I first arrive at Brickside, I had to double check to make sure I did not get the address wrong -- it looks just like a fancy sports bar. It has got glassy doors, glossed bar stools, four TVs facing in different directions with a large wall-sized TV in the middle of the bar. It also has floor to ceiling windows to shade in enough light that capture a sophisticated look. Seriously, what dives?

We took advantage of the happy hour which gave you $2 off any bar bites and $5 craft beers. I ordered shrimp skewers and they taste home made.



One of our accompanying member ordered a specialty fries - Honey Parmesan with Spicy Marinara. And they tastes delicious!



I definitely recommend this place to people after work whose looking for a good happy hour and up-scale environment. This is not a dive bar.

Grocery shopping on an empty stomach

It was a Sunday morning and I had no plans for the day. I thought I could enjoy my free time, read some books, and sit under the sun. One grouchy stomach alarmed me to open my refigerator for some carbs. There was nothing. I wasn't sure how that was physically possible. Most people have trouble getting rid of things in their refrigerator, and I thought I was like that too. Even there were no fresh produce left, at least the cans and jars of leftovers and produced goods would remain. But this time, there were nothing. The refrigerator was white. 

Hence I made a priority to stop by the nearby asian supermarket for some food that I am more used to. Everything in the supermarket looked delicious. What appeared in my brain was different ways to cooking with whichever ingredient I see. Salmon to be steamed or pan fried, pork bones made in soup as soup bases. Then I realized my superior appetite was caused by my empty stomach, which constantly sends signal to my brain about how hungry I actually am. My shopping cart ended up with something like this:

It was certainly over 100 dollars that I spend on groceries for that trip. I think that will keep me well feed with high sugar and salt foods for a while.

Half finished painting

I did not forget about my painting hobby.

Medium: Acrylic.

I painted this one day when I was under major stress. Those stress were accumulated mostly due to overbearing promises I have made to others and my obligation to keep my words. I wanted to paint something as practice to blending. For acrylic paints, I find blending a quite difficult technique to master. It is true that you can blend with additional water, but the amount of water on the brush is hard to control. Furthermore, based on how dry the paints are, the flexibility of blending varies. 

My inspiration for this painting coming from my deep desire to be in large cities. Living in Bethesda and Washington, D.C. has made me crave for the skyscrapers and gray clouds. It might be more or less obvious that this painting was paint over an older one. I was not entirely satisfied with the older painting, due to incomplete understanding in natural color and lighting, and painting over an older less satisfactory painting is a perfect way to destroy evidence for my past failure. The reason why this painting is a half finished painting is only because I think there are more adjustments I can make to make this more realistic looking. And how exactly I will do to achieve this, is yet unknown to me.

Choose of speciality in the medical field

It is the greatest honor to be chosen by admission committee to be given a spot in the incoming medical class. You will then start medical school very excitingly, then soon to discover that medical is very intense. You then will study at any possible free time you can find, wherever, whenever. You will then only have social lives occasionally on weekends. But these living styles are okay, because you know you are walking through the road to your own life fulfillment.

After two years of medical school, you start your clinical rotation without knowing anything about interaction with patients, no confidence in diagnosing their diseases, and no idea about what to do for any of the general chief complaints. You go through rounds and rounds of different medical specialities: internal medicine, emergency medicine, OB/GYN, neurology, psychiatry, and surgery. You will discover different people in each of the sub-specialities. You will draw closer to those people with personalities similar to you. If everything goes right, you will have an idea of what to do at the end of your third year of medical school, then choose the appropriate electives in your fourth year rounds. Then you will be prepare to apply for residency, knowing exactly where to apply to, and be somewhat prepared. 

However, there are students who have no idea about the speciality that they will choose for the rest of their lives. The nervousness, the peer pressure, the importance of the decision, all accumulate to the hesitation. People are deciding between radiology and pathology, neurology and cardiology, and even between internal medicine and dermatology. 

Due to the inexperience of an individual that has not gone through medical school just yet, I hope I do not have to face such difficult life determining question.

July 4th Fireworks

So I went to one of the beaches in Delaware with a group of people for the 4th of July weekend. Even through I do not unknown 100% of the accompanying group of people, I still had a blast. State of Delaware is known for having no sales tax due to large amount of corporate, banking, and income taxes. I stopped by an outlet mall and took advantage of some huge sales, ate food that I do not have to scramble to make, and went to the beach and covered myself with sands.

On the beach of Rehoboth is a nice boardwalk with many archaic stores. They reminded me of carnivals. With large teddy bears and silly stuffed animals as prizes, I skipped down the boardwalk with other newly met people feeling like I am thirteen. It was after the fireworks that they displayed on the beach -- a major tourist attraction. The fireworks rocked, especially at the end, when the sky lit up to celebrate independence, and moreover, the culture of America. Unfortunately, I only able to capture the middle segment of the whole show, instead of the climax.

Corner Grill Restaurant in Rehoboth, DE

Corner Grill Restaurant  is another family owned restaurant in Rehoboth beach. Their menu, compared to that of Robin Hood Restaurant is much more comprehensive. Even through the interior declaration of the restaurant looks just like another chinese take out restaurant, they are cleaner, and have photos of Santorini, Greece -- One of the islands that I have always wanted to go, circulating around the wall. At the entrance of the restaurant is a convenient store that sales snacks, which I struck as odd.

The food there definitely had a greek influence to it: feta & olives, gryo salads, and avgolemono soups. They were delicious, especially their Gryo Chicken Salad. Unfortunately I was not feeling the lunch time hunger, so I ordered dessert -- fresh fruit waffles.



Entrance of the restaurant, reminds me of a dry clean store.



Amazing gyro chicken salad with greek salad and fries on the side. Other than the fries, I give this dish a 9.5/10.



My fresh fruit waffles. They were made in the right way, but I have had something better elsewhere -- 8/10.



Souvlaki platter. Unfortunately I did not try it. Apparently the pita bread was delicious.



Veggie omelet. I did not try this dish as well. The flower on the plate did not come with the dish.

Getting a tan

Summer is here, which means hot weather, letting hair down near the beach, swim suits, and all that other good stuff. From working in laboratories almost everyday, there is a general rule of not wearing open-toed shoes. My shoe of the choice is the Toms. Their classic canvas Toms looks especially laid back yet classy. However, after wearing my toms to talk around under direct sunlight UV has lead me to a quite awkward tan. It was a tan that has put unnecessary emphasis on the top of the feet. Now I cannot wear flats, flip flops, and all the other summer shoes.



Now I am trying to get rid of this tan. I am thinking about covering up the darker areas and stay under the sun for a day.

Robin Hood Restaurant in Rehoboth Beach, DE

There are many family style restaurants in the local town of Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. I suspect it is part of the American tradition and way of life to open up a local family style restaurant next to the beach.

One of these restaurants that I visited with my group of vacationers is Robin Hood Restaurant. We went there for branch at 1pm, which technically I should label as lunch. The place was crowded, and we had to wait for 20 minutes to find a table of 4. We walked into the restaurant empty stomached and full of anticipation. Oh boy, did they make us wait long. I guess it was because they were too popular with the other tourists.

I ordered an orange juice that does not taste like orange juice, and a delicious garden omelet. Their omelets are served with toasted bread with butter and a potato side that is not french fries. Another friend at my table ordered two eggs sunny side up, which makes me also want to label this restaurant as a dinner.



Breakfast menu, I wonder what's for lunch.



Two egg sunny side up, according to my friend it was delicious.



My garden omelet, I give it a 8/10.

They say cruise ships are for old people

The July 4th weekend is usually a hot time for people to find excuses to go out and "explore" or "relax". My parents, for example, took the chance to go on a cruise ship to Alaska. Leading on some photos that I will be displaying, I think cruise ships are not THAT much fun for youngsters compare to people with a few more years of experience onto their life. Mostly because there isn't anywhere else to satisfy the curiosity of young hearts beside the actual cruise ship itself and the occasional stop onto nameless little towns. A vacation that I imagine that could be a blast would be somewhere with mountains and water, where miscellaneous mountain routes are to be found and rare ocean species are to be discovered; plates to be identified and seafood to be tasted.

My parents' vacation, on the other hand, does not necessarily correlate to what I was originally imagining -- they had a very nice bedroom inside that seemingly large cruise ship, fancy meals that actually looks tasty, and a very low-stress schedule with no deadlines. 

Fancy lighting in bedroom, which is much nicer than what I expected for an economical price.

Appetizer before main meal during dinner, I gotta say, this plate display certain level of aesthetics. 

I am not sure about your parents, but my parents love the idea of eating fatty snacks and reading whichever book of interest at the time. Apparently it is a sign of luxury during the older French Rococo times, and they love to preserve tradition.

Alaska ice. It's blue.

Occasional stop by of local towns. I am loving the clouds, although the tonality of clouds looks quite blue.

Have a happy 4th of July.